A. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to methods and systems for creation and distribution of advertising, promotional and informational electronic communications regarding products and services via computer and communication networks, and displaying same at desired locations. More specifically, the present invention is a system and method for creation of electronic advertisements using digital content made available for licensing, and placing the ads at desired network locations utilizing an auction of designated advertising space at desired locations on a network. The system can be used to provide an ad content as well as an ad space exchange for content licensors, advertisers and publishers, including barter-based implementations.
B. Background
Advertisers seeking the global reach of the Internet and other electronic networks as an effective and efficient medium for disseminating advertisements to consumers have had to deal with various limitations in technology and methods. From the advertiser's perspective, there are two main tasks to accomplish: 1) creation of an effective ad; and 2) effective placement of the ad. From the ad publisher's perspective there are also two main tasks to accomplish: 1) display of the highest revenue-producing ads; and 2) reducing the amount of work necessary to place, maintain, track and process payments for advertising. The creation of electronic advertising content can be an expensive task for those that take the traditional route of either creating content internally or engaging a third party contractor to create same. While there are sources of pre-existing electronic content that can be used in exchange for payment of a fee, because of content provider system limitations in the ability to track usage activity with respect to the content, usually the fee is a flat fee payable up front, which makes the use of such content an expense that users must incur beforehand. This method does not allow for optimization of return on investment, or “ROI,” with respect to ads based on real-time ad response, because if the advertising content is not working effectively, to change the content would mean losing all invested in the purchase of that content. This also can result in content licensors not maximizing the revenues generated from their content.
Effective placement of an ad is crucial for success of any ad campaign. The ad must reach the proper audience and as large an audience as possible in order to maximize the effectiveness of the ad in generating business for the advertiser. Ad display space costs money as well, and advertisers therefore need to make sure that the display locations they select for their ads produce an acceptable ROI to be worthwhile. In the case of the Internet, which is dominated by a large number of personal and special interest websites with relatively low traffic, a simple method for publishers to place advertising on their web sites for optimal return is necessary. Internet advertising charging methods include the pre-pay or billed cost-per-impression, or “CPM,” or cost-per-click, or “CPC,” models, wherein advertisers pay publishers to place their advertisements on a website according to the number of impressions served, or click actions taken on the advertisement. Usually these transactions are done through a third party agency who receives commissions based on a percentage agency discount offered by the publisher.
Methods currently in wide use for placing ads on electronic networks such as, for example, the Internet, are conceived primarily for the search engine business model, and work with an auction or bidding process to influence the position of a search listing within a search result list. Typically the advertiser pays a monetary amount every time action [such as a click] is taken on the listing. The auction can take into account a number of variables including cost-per-click, or “CPC” bid amount and the click-through rate of the advertisement. The advertiser sets up an account at the search engine, submits an ad for listing, enters keywords, and a cost-per-click monetary bid for placement of the ad. When the advertiser enters a bid amount the system then compares the bid amount with other bid amounts for the other ads that reference the same search term and generates a rank value for all search listings having the same search term. The rank value generated by the bidding process determines where the advertiser's listing will appear on the search results list page that is generated in response to a query of the search term by a searcher located at a client computer on the computer network. This system and method was effective in increasing the relevancy and “ROI” of contextual advertising by using corresponding search terms for the advertisement and the search listing, and offering a cost-per-click auction method so advertisers paid a desired amount only when their listing was clicked.
There remains a long felt need for publishers to easily and efficiently create and display advertising and for businesses to optimize their advertising expenses while increasing effectives of their advertising campaigns. Advertisers would benefit greatly if a system was available for them to easily and cost-efficiently procure quality digital content and create electronic ads using such content and then also direct, control and manage placement of the ads in all desired network locations all via one system, with all content usage and ad placement charges processed and paid for via one system. Advertisers would greatly benefit from a system that manages advertising costs by allowing them to use third party digital content on a cost-per-use basis and also pay for ad space for the ads created using such content in desired locations and in response to desired keywords on a cost-per-click basis, with payment from the advertiser to both the content licensor and the ad display location owner being processed each time the ad content is used by displaying the ad at the particular display location. They would further benefit from being able to manage their ad content composition and placement and make changes to their ad content and ad placement quickly and easily based on their assessment of ad and ad placement ROI or other effectiveness measures made possible by tracking data gathered by such a system. Additionally, advertisers and ad publishers would benefit greatly from having an ad space exchange system where publishers can make available their ad space/impression/view inventory in exchange not only for revenues from ad placements but alternately or also in exchange for ad space for their own ads placed at third party network locations, or other barterable commodities. Ad content licensors can also barter their content for impressions/views of their own ads at third party publishers' network locations. The use of such barterable commodities in an advertisement transaction setting has until now not been utilized effectively. By using bartering of such barterable commodities in an ad space exchange, more active advertising, with more effective use of available ad space, is possible. Advertisers can use untapped assets (e.g., their own unused ad space or their licenseable content) rather than cash to pay for advertising, making advertising less of an expense. As discussed below, the present invention is such a system.
Previous methods only allow for simple text ads, or listings that link to web page. Larger rich media and professionally designed display ads are proven more effective at getting results, but in the past only available to companies with large budgets. Large professionally designed display ads are more effective then text ads in getting response, but in the past where not easily distributed contextually. Placing large display ads on websites previously would be done by manually placing code in the publisher's web page, or in the web publishers ad distribution system, and if the ad was to be updated it had to be re-inserted. There needs to be one place where anyone who wants to advertise can create a rich media display ad and campaign parameters, and anyone with a website can place one piece of code in their webpage to display and track the advertising. If someone does not have an ecommerce website, there needs to be a simple way to upload products and prices, then connect their online “Store” to advertising they create.
The Applicants' efforts to address these needs have included the use of “File Server Direct Connection” technology, or “FSDC.” FSDC is a method to establish a direct connection between a self-contained self-executing file and a custom network server-based application. FSDC preferably uses a .swf file or alternately an HTML or AJAX file which sends a query string directly to a specific URL for a desired network server, without loading variables from the file or requests to the history object of a user's network browser. The files include instruction coding that allows the file to establish a direct connection with one or more network servers, including servers storing content files that can then be run, and servers that when contacted track the access and use of the content files. By use of .swf files with commands coded within the file to establish connection with a tracking server, the tracking issue with cost per click/impression/sale electronic advertising schemes can be overcome. FSDC is described and claimed in the Applicants' pending U.S. non-provisional patent application entitled “Method and System For File Server Direct Connection,” application Ser. No. 10/316431 filed on Dec. 11, 2002 and published on Jun. 26, 2003 (Publication No. 20030120727), the specification and figures and all other parts of which are incorporated herein by reference. The coding of the .swf file establishes a connection to the tracking server so that a tabulation may be made, appropriately noting the response to the ad. As the communication to the tracking server is only made once the ad file has been opened, this is preferred over the prior art methodologies, which initiate the communication for tabulation prior to completing the link to the desired ad or site. In many cases, such tabulation is premature, as the user may close the window before the earlier desired material is delivered. The Applicants also have used FSDC in a system and method for creating and distributing customized rich media marketing and sales materials via email, which is described and claimed in the Applicant's co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/417,478, filed on Apr. 17, 2003 and published on Oct. 23, 2003 (Publication No. US 2003-0200145-A1), as well as an Internet-based system and method for distributing interstitial advertisements, described and claimed in the Applicant's co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/641,104 filed on Aug. 14, 2003 and published on Feb. 17, 2005 (Publication No. US 2005-0038900-A1), the specification and figures and all other parts of each of which are incorporated herein by reference. The system uses a relational database to execute dispatching commands to retrieve, assemble and dispatch ads for display and access destination pages based on ad viewer click action in response to the ad. The relational database used to execute dispatching commands and click action destinations also stores the command data required to execute the retrieval of selected digital content files previously stored in electronic format in one or more servers, messaging and billing for licensed digital media, enabling the viewer's browser to execute the assembly of the final whole advertising content.
The present invention builds upon the Applicants' basic FSDC rich media marketing material building and advertisement distribution platforms for electronic ad creation, distribution and tracking described in the above-referenced co-pending applications to provide a novel advertising electronic commerce system and method improving both efficiency and effectiveness for ad content licensors, advertisers and the publishers of the advertisements. Publishers and advertisers can benefit greatly from the present invention, which provides a “one stop shop” for electronic advertising on multiple networks” where everything necessary to effectively display, create, distribute, and track advertising is provided.